Back in June I wrote about problems with my Treo 600, which I thought would be solved by a software upgrade. Well, the problems went away after the upgrade, but then they started to surface again after about 2 weeks. What sort of problems? Well, as I said back in June the phone would periodically "start trying to access the network, fail, and then repeat the process. The only solution seemed to be to reboot the phone. All in all, this was a real annoyance, especially when it would enter this bizarre looping behavior right when I was trying to take a call."
But then that problem stopped, and instead the phone would start the insanity when I was about to receive a call. Let me tell you that’s really frustrating. You can see that your wife is calling you and you go to pick up the call and the phone goes into technopsychosis.
Speaking of my wife, she has a Treo 600 and she has problems with her phone too. She has AT&T service (GSM) and I have Sprint (CDMA) so that’s an indication that the problem is related to the phone and not the wireless network. She travels a lot so having a reliable cellphone is important to her. So, while she enjoys having a phone with PDA functions, she’s pretty much set on ditching her Treo and getting something more basic and reliable.
As for me, I’m going to take the phone to the local Sprint store (armed with very low expectations) and see if they can do something to it to make it work better. If that doesn’t result in the phone improving its behavior it will be time to start shopping for a new phone. I don’t want a smartphone anymore, but I do like having the calendar and PDA functions. I’d like to have bluetooth, but Sprint doesn’t offer any bluetooth phones, or didn’t the last time I checked.
If anyone has recommendations, I’m open to suggestions. I use an Apple computer with iCal and I’d like to have a phone that I can sync easily with iCal and the Apple Address Book. I don’t need the E-mail function because I’m increasingly able to get E-mail via a Wi-Fi connection. And I definitely don’t care about browsing the internet on a phone. Basically, I want a reliable (preferably small) phone that has the aforementioned sync features. Bluetooth would be nice, but is not critical.
Update: I took the phone into Sprint and they are going to replace it. I got an E-mail from a reader who told me he had a similar problem and when his phone was replaced the problems went away. I get my new phone on Tuesday so we’ll see what happens.
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